With each pass something new is revealed to you. This poem deserves your attention and your applause for its ability to reinvent itself with each read. Bravo, L.O. Campbell, bravo.
Haunting. The idea of the shadow remaining when the body is gone, lingering lost hope like seeds put in burned ground. Reread it slowly with Radiohead's Creep playing in the background awesome. Thank you
This is marvelous. The imagery - "cage of my own bone", "Hips stutter like gunfire", a body "broken open like a border town" - create such vivid visuals of how our bodies can and do fail us yet retain memory ("what stayed") that enables doing the difficult work of "moving / against the pull" that keeps us down, which is a mental and a physical struggle both, sometimes in conflict with each other, that, when they move in concert, enliven us to treat every day as a new starting point, one step building on the other.
Thank you for reading so closely. For me the line comes from something much more concrete than metaphor or abstract time. It grew out of physical recovery and the small, private negotiations with pain and fear that never make it into public language. The steps are literal, the letters unsent because survival often leaves no room for explanation. I’m glad the imagery spoke to you, even if we’re approaching it from different places.
It does feel like this piece is about literally learning to walk again, I can assure.
But thanks for meeting me where I am, even though the imagery came across differently I am considering your words to understand the place you came from in this piece.
Maybe I will become her ,
The swan,
But I have been blackened by these eyeless ghosts of my past,
I will be a black swan.
Incredible read.
With each pass something new is revealed to you. This poem deserves your attention and your applause for its ability to reinvent itself with each read. Bravo, L.O. Campbell, bravo.
Haunting. The idea of the shadow remaining when the body is gone, lingering lost hope like seeds put in burned ground. Reread it slowly with Radiohead's Creep playing in the background awesome. Thank you
GoodMorining, I feel this poem gently folows the body as it learns to stand again.
This is marvelous. The imagery - "cage of my own bone", "Hips stutter like gunfire", a body "broken open like a border town" - create such vivid visuals of how our bodies can and do fail us yet retain memory ("what stayed") that enables doing the difficult work of "moving / against the pull" that keeps us down, which is a mental and a physical struggle both, sometimes in conflict with each other, that, when they move in concert, enliven us to treat every day as a new starting point, one step building on the other.
Beautifully written , loved "I am not whole. I am what’s left
when the lake freezes", "I dance for what stayed,
for the swan that learned to walk
before it could fly again." it felt like fixing with intention when broken inside
“Each step is a small war I win,
each turn a letter I’ll never send.”
This line to me feels like the unseen aspects of recovery that only the self can acknowledge fully
As a whole the imagery in this is slow “freeze thaw freeze” in particular offers abstract time
Thank you for reading so closely. For me the line comes from something much more concrete than metaphor or abstract time. It grew out of physical recovery and the small, private negotiations with pain and fear that never make it into public language. The steps are literal, the letters unsent because survival often leaves no room for explanation. I’m glad the imagery spoke to you, even if we’re approaching it from different places.
It does feel like this piece is about literally learning to walk again, I can assure.
But thanks for meeting me where I am, even though the imagery came across differently I am considering your words to understand the place you came from in this piece.
So beautiful
A beautifully evoked conflict between control and violence and the power to keep the latter in check